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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9292828" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>There's probably more to it than what's publicly known, but it's hard to guess at the details. Howard Thompson is still something of a mysterious figure in gaming circles and there were all sorts of rumors about why he shut down Metagaming so suddenly and has held on to the rights so tightly for as long as he did. There was also some apparent bad blood between him and Steve when SJG was starting up, which led to legal proceedings where Steve wound up with Ogre/GEV/One-Page Bulge. Howard then printed a spiteful little "game" called Fistful of Turkeys that parodied SJG stylings (particularly One-Page Bulge) and was marked as being from a faux company called Some Turkey Games. He also started up a new Metagaming house organ digest mag called Interplay, and this not long after selling The Space Gamer to SJG because Metagaming didn't want to expend time and effort on producing a magazine any more. Interplay felt very much like another spite play aimed at Steve, who'd turned TSG from a modestly popular mag under Metagaming into one of the top ten (and arguably to four or five) mags of its era.</p><p></p><p>If nothing else, Metagaming was a historically important company for creating the microgame format, which was quite the craze well into the 80s and has seen fitful revivals ever since. The original Cheapass Games stuff might be the ultimate expression of the "clever rules, cheap components" philosophy, but Howard Thompson started it way back when. And then he packed up his toys and more-or-less vanished, leaving most of the company's work in perpetual licensing limbo. There are probably some former Metagaming staff and freelance designers that could tell us more (Steve being the most obvious) but none of them have come forward yet, and a few (eg Lynn Willis, designer of Godsfire, Olympica and Holy War as well as a bunch of GDW, WEG and Chaosium stuff) have passed away at this point. </p><p></p><p>SJG's really the only company that's bothered to put real effort into reviving those old games, and even then it's only been the ones Steve authored himself. Other creators (or their estates, for deceased ones) could presumably use the same legal process Steve did to recover TFT/Melee/Wizard/etc. but none have been inclined to do so. Avalon Hill did get the rights to Stellar Conquest and Hitler's War before they collapsed themselves - which is kind of ironic, given that Howard wrote Stellar Conquest and started Metagaming to publish it after having it be rejected by AH in the first place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9292828, member: 7044704"] There's probably more to it than what's publicly known, but it's hard to guess at the details. Howard Thompson is still something of a mysterious figure in gaming circles and there were all sorts of rumors about why he shut down Metagaming so suddenly and has held on to the rights so tightly for as long as he did. There was also some apparent bad blood between him and Steve when SJG was starting up, which led to legal proceedings where Steve wound up with Ogre/GEV/One-Page Bulge. Howard then printed a spiteful little "game" called Fistful of Turkeys that parodied SJG stylings (particularly One-Page Bulge) and was marked as being from a faux company called Some Turkey Games. He also started up a new Metagaming house organ digest mag called Interplay, and this not long after selling The Space Gamer to SJG because Metagaming didn't want to expend time and effort on producing a magazine any more. Interplay felt very much like another spite play aimed at Steve, who'd turned TSG from a modestly popular mag under Metagaming into one of the top ten (and arguably to four or five) mags of its era. If nothing else, Metagaming was a historically important company for creating the microgame format, which was quite the craze well into the 80s and has seen fitful revivals ever since. The original Cheapass Games stuff might be the ultimate expression of the "clever rules, cheap components" philosophy, but Howard Thompson started it way back when. And then he packed up his toys and more-or-less vanished, leaving most of the company's work in perpetual licensing limbo. There are probably some former Metagaming staff and freelance designers that could tell us more (Steve being the most obvious) but none of them have come forward yet, and a few (eg Lynn Willis, designer of Godsfire, Olympica and Holy War as well as a bunch of GDW, WEG and Chaosium stuff) have passed away at this point. SJG's really the only company that's bothered to put real effort into reviving those old games, and even then it's only been the ones Steve authored himself. Other creators (or their estates, for deceased ones) could presumably use the same legal process Steve did to recover TFT/Melee/Wizard/etc. but none have been inclined to do so. Avalon Hill did get the rights to Stellar Conquest and Hitler's War before they collapsed themselves - which is kind of ironic, given that Howard wrote Stellar Conquest and started Metagaming to publish it after having it be rejected by AH in the first place. [/QUOTE]
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